Facebook is where the people are. The numbers are staggering. More than 250 million people actively use the social Internet site. People connect with one another around the globe. Strangers become friends, and old friends find one another.
It erases political boundaries between countries. Walls are breached between rich and poor, the educated and uneducated. Religious and denominational differences become insignificant. On Facebook, people focus on people for who they are, not what they do or what positions they hold.
Jesus went to the people regardless of who they were, what they did or what position they held. Find him at the temple testifying to the power brokers of Judaism. See him by the lake teaching and feeding thousands. Feel his love toward the Samaritan woman who was ashamed to mingle with the ladies of the village. Listen to him pronouncing forgiveness to sinners, words of eternal life to Nicodemus, and telling the story about the prodigal son.
Jesus walked the dusty roads of Palestine going to the people. He loved them, encouraged them, saved them and taught them.
Today, the dusty road is the Internet. That's where the people are, and that is where the presence of Christ must go, by way of his followers.
Through Facebook, the opportunity exists for one person at a computer to fulfill the Lord's Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations ..."
I opened my Facebook account in January. I am now counseling people throughout the United States, praying for specific requests and giving witness to Christ.
I keep in contact with pastors including Stanley Mukhwana in Bungoma, Kenya.
He and his wife have an orphanage ministry with 40 children ages 3 to 12. They struggle to feed the children and to take care of their own basic needs.
He told me that he has been praying for seven years for God to provide him a bicycle. He walks everywhere he goes, including an hour and a half to the Internet cafe.
I told his story in a newsletter . A reader called offering to donate money for a bicycle.
The good pastor writes, "You have really blessed my heart in a deep way that I cannot say. Yesterday, I went home on a new bicycle and many people wondered how God had done this. Tears came down when thinking of what the Lord has done."
Today, we can expand ministry and go where the people are, like Jesus did, through the Internet. We need go no farther than our computer keyboard and monitor. Ministry to the world is literally at our fingertips.
The Rev. Dan White is the pastor of North Columbia Church in Appling. Find the church on Facebook at groups.to/northcolumbiachurch.
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